


You love all sailors, but hate the beach

by jouissant



Category: Star Trek RPF
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, Marriage Proposal, PintoBarSecretSanta2014
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-23
Updated: 2014-12-23
Packaged: 2018-03-03 01:32:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2833256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jouissant/pseuds/jouissant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Christopher,” Zach says, with only a little bit of an edge to his voice. “Where the hell are we?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	You love all sailors, but hate the beach

**Author's Note:**

  * For [scifishipper](https://archiveofourown.org/users/scifishipper/gifts).



> Not exactly Christmassy, but hopefully in the spirit of the prompt. Hope you enjoy! <3

“Um, aren’t we going to be late to dinner?” Zach taps at the window as their exit sails by. 

Chris looks over from behind the wheel. “Huh? Oh, didn’t I tell you? I pushed the reservation back to eight-thirty.” 

Zach frowns. “But you hate eating late,” he says. “And besides, doesn’t your new, like, dietary guru have a moratorium on carbs after seven p.m?” 

Chris makes a face. The lowering sun is slanting into his eyes and Zach reaches over to fiddle with Chris’s visor. 

“Thanks,” Chris says. “Anyway, it’s actually a moratorium on _anything_ after seven, and a moratorium on carbs always, and if I think too hard about it I’ll cry. But it doesn’t matter tonight.” 

“Oh no?” 

“Nope. Tonight I’m blowing it off.” 

Zach stretches his legs the entire depth of the footwell. He’s intrigued. Chris going off-plan is usually pretty rewarding for everyone involved. “Any reason in particular?” 

Chris reaches back and rubs at the tide of red rising on his neck. “Not really.” 

“Hmm,” Zach says. “Okay.” 

Twenty minutes later and still driving, Zach is even more intrigued and getting kind of peckish. They’ve been looking forward to trying this place for awhile, and Zach definitely went easy on lunch in anticipation. Across from him in the driver’s seat, Chris watches the road placidly. They’ve turned away from the coast now, and the light is out of Chris’s face altogether. 

Zach turns back and watches the slow fade of the day’s blue sky into pinks and oranges out over the Pacific. “Dude,” he says. “Where are we going?” 

Chris wags a finger over the steering wheel, clearly trying to bite back a grin. “Patience is a virtue,” he says. 

“Oh, come on.” 

“Pfft. The number of times you’ve said those exact fucking words to me in bed? I should drive you up to Canada and back.” 

“You wouldn’t,” Zach says. “We’d miss our dinner reservation.” 

Another ten minutes, and the road is winding now, Chris slowing the car to a crawl and as they come around a hairpin turn. “Here we go,” he says to himself, pulling off into a small gravel parking lot. 

“Christopher,” Zach says, with only a little bit of an edge to his voice. “Where the hell are we?” 

Chris puts the car in park and turns to Zach, smiling in earnest. “You’ll see,” he says. Then he hops out of the car with an infuriating spring in his step, leaving Zach to straggle out after him. 

Zach gets out of the car and looks around, stretching up towards the early evening sky. The light is starting to soften, the blue overhead cooling into tones of violet. Chris has popped the trunk and is hefting out a massive cooler, which he sets on the gravel so he can lean down again and pull out the quilt from the guest bed, folded in a thick square Chris tucks under his arm. He nods at the cooler. “Wanna help me out here?” 

Zach frowns, because he sometimes reacts to uncertainty with toddler-like suspicion. He suspects it’s a trait he’s picked up from Chris over the years. “Oh sure, give me the heavy lifting.” 

Chris raises an eyebrow. “Will it make you feel better if I ask nicely? Oh, _please,_ Zachary, you’re ever so big and strong--”

He does this awful high-pitched Oliver Twist accent and if he didn’t look so good in this perfect golden hour lighting Zach would probably feel inclined to punch him in the face, or just bend him over the hood of the car and really make him ask nicely. But Chris obviously has some scheme up his sleeve, so Zach shoulders the damn cooler with only a minimum of eye-rolling. 

They’re in a park, Zach guesses, or more accurately they’re in a lost patch of meadow somewhere up above the city. There’s a path cut through the waist-high grass, and stray wildflowers here and there, and bees buzzing through a light that’s about the color of honey, now that you mention it. Chris is watching Zach’s face, and for once Zach doesn’t feel the need to second guess what he’ll see there. He knows he’s gazing upon this bucolic fucking vista with the appropriate degree of wonder. Things like this matter to Chris now; he’s thirty-five and he’s really into _moments._

“This is pretty,” Zach says, and Chris’s face softens. 

“Right?” Chris steps carefully in front of Zach to take the lead down the grassy track. 

They wend their way through the underbrush until they get to an abrupt right turn, off into the weeds to a tamped-down place that looks like some aesthetically-pleasing Jersey cow has lately used it as a wallow. It’s here that Chris sets down the quilt, takes a seat and holds out a hand to Zach. 

“We’re going to get ticks,” Zach says, but he sets the cooler down and sinks to the earth next to Chris anyway. He’s got…he’s got a feeling. He can’t put his finger on it. 

“Hi,” Chris says. 

“Um, hi.” 

“You’re really cute when you’re pissed off,” Chris says. 

“Who says I’m pissed off?” 

“You’re hungry and you’re grumpy. Takes one to know one.” 

Zach can’t argue with either of those statements, so he clams up and nods instead. 

“You’re cute when you’re pissed off,” Chris repeats. “And when you’re sick, like you were last week.” 

Zach got food poisoning last week, and he was decidedly not cute, unless you thought spending eighteen hours sleeping in the bathroom encrusted in vomit was cute. Chris had brought him a steady supply of Gatorade and crackers and let Zach snot all over his shirt when he was depressed and thought he was going to die or never get to eat real food ever again. Which…might actually have something to do with why he’s so hungry and grumpy right now.

“That was a train wreck,” Zach says. “I’m surprised you didn’t just leave me there wedged between the toilet and the wall, just take your stuff and go.” 

“I’d never,” Chris says, and his tone is possibly a little graver than a lighthearted discussion of Zach’s adventures with hyperemesis warrants. “Even if you were kind of rank by the end. But you know I’d never, right? You know that I’m…in this. For the long haul.” 

Zach shrugs. “Sure,” he says. “Me too.” 

“So, uh, given that—“ Chris sits up then, crosses his legs and pulls Zach’s hands into his lap. “Given that…okay,” he says. “I’m doing a shitty job of this. I thought about, like, writing something down, and I decided not to, and now here we are talking about puke.” 

“You brought it up. And what are you even talking about? A shitty job of what?” Zach’s mouth is a little dry. “Do you have anything to drink in here?” he asks, indicating the cooler. 

Chris looks a little strangled. He’s nervous, Zach realizes. “I have champagne,” Chris babbles. “I mean, it was for after, but I guess if you’re thirsty—“

Champagne. Oh, fuck. “After what exactly?” 

Chris draws a shaky breath. “We should get married,” he says in a rush. “I think.” 

Zach feels his mouth fall open. “Uh,” he says, and that’s great, Zach, just great. About as great as Chris’s quasi-proposal, though, so they’re still even. “Are you…are you asking?” 

Chris nods. He clasps Zach’s hands in both of his. They’re shaking, but Zach can’t tell where exactly it’s coming from. He definitely feels like his hands could be shaking right now. It’s distinctly in the realm of possibility. 

“Zach--" 

“If you’re gonna fucking ask, Pine, _ask._ ” He’s trying really hard not to sound breathless. He’s probably failing. It’s embarrassing. 

“Jesus Christ,” Chris says. “You’re such a dick, you know that? Zachary J. Quinto, will you do me the honor--" 

“The _considerable_ honor, come on now.” Zach’s smiling, and his eyes are watering, and what the hell’s that about? Probably the allergyfest they’re sitting in. He’s going to start sneezing here in a minute. Dammit, Chris.

“—The considerable honor of shutting your fucking trap and marrying me?” 

The taut, nervy mask of his face breaks into a patented Chris smile, the secret one, the one no camera’s ever quite come close to capturing. And it figures, because it was that incandescence, that movie-star wattage and the brains that back it up, that hooked Zach on Chris in the first place. 

For better or for worse, apparently. And God help him, Zach can’t not smile back. “Well, when you put it like that,” he says. 

“Yeah?” Chris asks. 

Zach wants to come up with some sparkling one-liner. He probably could, too, and Chris’s face would freeze for just a split second before he realized Zach was joking, and Zach would get to feel really self-satisfied for that split second, the way he always does when he indulges his deep-seated need to vanquish Chris in matters of verbal oneupmanship. So, yeah, he could do it, and things would probably come right shortly thereafter. But if he thinks about it… what are the one-liners but stale defense mechanisms anyway, and what was their wordplay but foreplay anyway, back when all they had was jet lag and too-soft hotel beds and late, manic nights soaked in booze and dancing around what actually mattered? 

Zach’s jagged edges feel familiar, and if Zach asks it of him Chris will bite his lip and let them rough him up dutifully. But Zach won’t ask it of him. Because he has the sneaking suspicion that if he does, when he thinks back on this moment in the future what he’ll see won’t be Chris’s adorable crows-feet as he smiles squintily at Zach like Zach’s the setting sun. It’ll be that heartbeat’s-worth of hollowness, the lull before Chris gets that of course Zach’s just fucking around, of course the answer is, the answer has always been—

“Yes,” Zach says. 

There’s a little beat anyway, and he wonders if maybe Chris expected something else. Now that Zach’s settled on the path of the light, that prospect is suddenly untenable. He leans forward and catches Chris by the shirt. “Yes, I’ll marry you,” he says again, just for the sake of clarity. This time, it’s indisputably breathless, and Zach doesn’t care. 

As Zach leans closer still Chris smiles, so that their kiss is more like Zach’s lips on Chris’s teeth. It’s awkward as hell, like a first kiss, and Zach finds it oddly fitting. He skates over to the corner of Chris’s mouth and kisses that instead, hooks his fingers under Chris’s collar. 

“You’re so sneaky,” he mutters. “How long have you been plotting this?” 

“Actually, not that long,” Chris says. “You know me, I’ve been trying to embrace spontaneity. I’ve been thinking about it for awhile, but…today just kind of felt like the right day.” 

“What, with me being so fucking chipper? I was shitting all over your big plan from minute one.” 

“Aw,” Chris says, carding Zach’s hair back off his forehead. “I like it better this way. Unbridled Quinto. It’s what I’m signing up for, anyway. Might as well go in eyes open.” 

For the second time this evening, Zach finds he can’t argue with Chris’s logic. So again, he nods, and lets Chris pull him down onto the blanket. The sky above them is turning indigo now. There’s a tide of stars rising to the west, and when Zach speaks again he’ll tell Chris that this, as moments go, is objectively spectacular.


End file.
